Gainesville, Fla. (WCB) – The market for home medical tests is growing, but how safe are those test kits?
This week on Tech Tuesday, our partners at UF Innovate and SCAD Media tell us what a University of Florida researcher discovered.
Hello and Happy Tech Tuesday. My name is Nicolas Coute and I’m with UF Innovate. Home testing is very common today due to covid. Well, what if we took those same tests for Covid and applied them to other diseases? Dr. Piyush Jain, a researcher who is helping us today, is seeing if we can expand it to other diseases. Dr. Jane, thank you so much for joining us today.
Thank you so much for having me.
over here. Can you tell us about your research and why it is so important?
So all of us with this pandemic, we’ve had covid tests and we know how hard it is for us, this pandemic.
So now, what’s going on with those tests that you do at home, or if you take those tests and you see it’s positive, you’re not sure if it’s positive. Look at the negative. We are not just because we are negative. So what do you do, you should go back to the doctor, do a PCR test to confirm.
And that’s a problem because you have to do it over and over again just to make sure you’re positive or negative. So if we can do a good test like PCR, you don’t need to go to the doctor. You can carry out the same level of sensitivity and specificity in the comfort of your own home. And that’s what we’re trying to build. We are trying to build a technology that allows someone to take a simple test in the comfort of their home.
Perfect. yes. And as I understand it, you have a very broad background in all kinds of medical matters. Can you tell us how you are trying to take that knowledge and put it to the test?
for sure. So my lab doesn’t really focus on diagnostics. Although this is one of the applications. And so our lab is working on how we can improve CRISPR/CAS systems. And in one of the applications the investigation happened. And that’s helping the technology development part where we can engineer CRISPR/CAS systems and improve their overall speed. Simplicity is helping us take this to the test. And now we get into investigations. And since we’re here, we’ve developed tests for covid, but we’re thinking beyond covid.
So where can people who are interested in your research go to find out more?
So you can follow us on Twitter where I post regular updates or visit our lab website at https://www.che.ufl.edu.
so cool. So another great Tech Tuesday. Thanks for joining us, Dr. Jain. See you next time.
Thank you all.
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